K Sera Sera and United Media Works to launch new joint venture

New company to be called KSSUMV DigitalPritha Mitra Dasgupta | ETBrandEquity | December 15, 2015, 08:22 IST

Image credit: GettyDigital movie distribution companies K Sera Sera and United Media Works have merged to form a new equal joint venture called KSSUMW Digital. K Sera Sera’s Satish Panchariya will be the chairman, while United Media Works’ Ashish Bhandari will be the managing director of the new company.

“A lot of our processes were common to both companies and in a way were doing double work and maintaining same teams separately. This merger will bring efficiency in our system and better technologies synergies. While the teams will be merged and we plan to retain all the employees, we will find ways to increase our revenues faster,” said Vineeta Dwivedi, CEO of K Sera Sera Digital Cinema.

K Sera Sera and UMW have a little over 5% market share individually at present. After the merger, the company aims to capture 25% market share in the next two years and plans to spend over Rs 100 crore to beef up its services.

It plans to increase the count to 2,000 screens within two years and expand its footprint across southern and eastern India.

“There are around 5,000 screens in the southern markets and are mostly cineplexes. It consists of 60% of all the cinema theatres in India. Moreover, producers down south are always open to working with new distribution companies and so there is a huge scope to grow,” said Ashish Bhandari, co-founder and joint managing director of United Media Works.Even the footfall in cinema halls in southern India is more than in the rest of India, said Bhandari. On average the footfall in the southern parts of the country is 60%, while in northern India it is 35%, he said.As part of their growth strategy, the two companies aim to reach out to advertisers, target both national and regional players, and offer them pan-India reach. Both the companies are working together to build a common technology platform for content acquisition, content processing and field servicing.

“Post merger the advertising revenue of the new company is likely to grow 300%,” said Bhandari, talking about one of the two sources of revenues for digital movie distribution companies, the other being content distribution revenue.